Loss of primary tropical forests falls 36% in 2025
The decline, measured by satellite, follows the 2024 level and is linked mainly to Brazil's efforts; however, growing climate pressures persist elsewhere, as in Canada.
Saturday, 7 November 2026
In 2025 the world lost 4.3 million hectares of primary tropical forest, 36% less than in 2024. This emerges from the report by Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland, which monitors the extent of tropical forest cover worldwide every year using satellite data.
The improvement primarily concerns Brazil, where the decline in deforestation under the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is identified by the report as the main factor behind the overall reduction. Broadening the view beyond the tropics, global forest loss — including ecosystems outside tropical areas — fell by 14% compared to the previous year, a more modest decline but still in the same direction.
The figure is measured by a research body independent of the Brazilian government, which is the main beneficiary of the recorded improvement: Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland use satellite surveys to estimate forest cover loss, a method that does not depend on communications or self-assessments from the national governments concerned. This is why the figure can be considered an external measure and not an announcement by those who derive political benefit from it.
The picture, however, is not uniformly positive. The same report notes that Canada experienced its second-worst wildfire season ever recorded, a sign of how climate pressures on forests continue to grow in other areas of the planet even as the aggregate tropical figure improves.
The comparison between the two figures — the 36% decline in the tropics and the more modest 14% decline globally, together with the wildfire crisis in Canada — paints a picture in which the improvement is real but concentrated: driven mainly by Brazil, not replicated everywhere, and measured by satellite year after year regardless of who administers the forests observed.